Natoma Group: On TopicNatoma Group: On Topichttp://natomagroup.com/natoma-home/2017-12-05T06:24:43ZSquarespacePay to play? It can't happen here... (ICT4E in developing and developed countries 1)http://natomagroup.com/natoma-home/2017/11/5/pay-to-play-it-cant-happen-here-ict4e-in-developing-and-deve.htmlEdmond Gaible2017-11-06T04:54:43Z2017-11-06T04:54:43ZThe NY Times on 4 Nov published a long account of the inroads that technology has made into schooling. Early on, the article drops "Rwanda" as a name, but the article is focused on the influence that vendors wield over schools and school districts. Who among us has not encountered pay to play?

In the US, the lack of compensation of teachers combined with a lack of support / respect opens superintendents and principals to the blandishments -- engagement in conferences, exposure to innnovation -- that are in one sense the only ways that school systems (and their representatives) can learn.

(In another sense, the privation of teachers and the locus of innovation in the private sector is the result of [another] massive shift of funds from the public sector, in the form of public schools, to the private sector. Which are now in the best cases funded to buy products and services from the private sector. I believe that it's at least a $15 billion sector.)

I'm most interested in the ways in which this article, focused on 1:1 projects in the Greater Baltimore area, points out the ways in which ICT4E projects in developed"countries (the USA these days calls the concept of development into question) differ from those in developing countries. I recently proposed an evaluation of a project, "Rwandan Girls Education Advancement Programme," which among other interventions would provide: Support for basic literacy & numeracy among girls;support for improved attendance; support for reduced teenage pregnancy. Etc. It's not that these objectives are unwise, or that they aren't also appropriate for schools in the US; it's that they are priorities that are not well addressed through the quality-focused provisions of a 1:1 initiative.

]]>big data, artificial intelligence, smart nigel shadbolt rockshttp://natomagroup.com/natoma-home/2017/8/1/big-data-artificial-intelligence-smart-nigel-shadbolt-rocks.htmlEdmond Gaible2017-08-01T04:47:26Z2017-08-01T04:47:26Z"It's not enough to not do evil. What does it mean to do good?"

I don't totally know what to say about this conversation between Sir Nigel Shadbolt and Mr. Quentin Hardy, head of editorial at Google Cloud. (Mr Hardy does a pretty good job of identifying the hot spots. Sometimes he tries a bit too hard to seem like he is able to comment on them. But hey...) But it's very cool. Sir Nigel is just way, way smarter and way more focused on this stuff than I could ever be.

A couple of points of interest: At about 24:00 Sir Shadbolt discusses open data and says that "the world just got better." He suggests that it's not about opening everything, it's about opening data that enables decision-making and innovation. Right after that, at 25:50, Sir Nigel talks about empowering citizen data warriors (my term); as the goal: citizens who not only allow some of their data to be used, but who use open data to solve problems and answer questions. And a bit later on (@ 48:40), they talk about the potential for intensifying the north-south divide in relation to data and data use and innovation.

(It's hard to imagine that citizen data warriors would ever be able to access the databases AND the computing power necessary to creat the inflated, titillating, strippy-tease information that would enable people to get close to their potential oppressors.)

it's important to note that that divide, such as it is, emerges not from the openness of data per se, but the opennness of government and more broadly attitudes about privacy, accountability and knowledge -- and knowledge is itself the point where value is harvested --

Pay attention, if you will, to the overall attention to profit. The interlocutors discuss the potential hegemony of the transnational corporate sector and essentially suggest that someone should do something about this. But at least they mention it.

Very, very many points later in the discussion about the affective/meta/cognitive differences between humans and their machines.

]]>On net neutralityhttp://natomagroup.com/natoma-home/2017/7/12/on-net-neutrality.htmlEdmond Gaible2017-07-12T23:16:41Z2017-07-12T23:16:41ZIt's 2017, two years after the first go-round with net neutrality. (Whew! Dodged that bullet!)

But it's back. The current administration is trying to get it off the ground again, even though the biggest of the big tech giants reject the concept entirely.

The Natoma Group (the Nano-Natoma Group?) is tiny. But net neutrality is even more critical for us and for educators than it is for Facebook. Support it!

]]>Health care, education and YOU!http://natomagroup.com/natoma-home/2017/6/26/health-care-education-and-you.htmlEdmond Gaible2017-06-27T02:17:34Z2017-06-27T02:17:34ZI'm sorry, this message is really about learning, not about politics. BUT... Today the Congressional Budget Office listed their "scoring" of the Senate healthcare bill, the Better Healthcare Act (BHCA I think). CBO states that 22 million people will lose healthcare insurance over the next 10 years. Most of the news that I read is going nuts about this, hoping that voters will realize that the congress is enacting a massive transfer of wealth in the form of tax cuts to the top 0.1%.

On the Fox News website, however, you would have all of this discussed in only 457 words. What could be more economical?

So. Why is this about education and learning? Because the site cited is covering the biggest news by not covering it much at all (while the negative impacts of the rise in the minimum wage, with that photo and front-page treatment, gets 511 words).

We need our children (and our adults) to be able to discern when they are being gamed. That might require understanding that an n=1 experiment is valueless. That might require checking another news source to see what's what. That might require empathy, understanding that the closure of Planned Parenthood clinics in distant states _terminally_ "inconveniences" women.

(Sorry to go all political on your a**. This is about learning, not politics, but the conclusion that we must reach is that in fact "learning is political." i hesitate to say, "learning in a dictatorship is political." We are not there yet. Learning is the antidote to authoritarianism. Perhaps we can agree on that.)

]]>The race between self-driving cars and educationhttp://natomagroup.com/natoma-home/2017/6/6/the-race-between-self-driving-cars-and-education.htmlEdmond Gaible2017-06-06T07:24:12Z2017-06-06T07:24:12ZThe connection between education and employment has never been better explained than in Katz and Goldin’s The race between technology and education. Katz and Goldin describe an education system in the US that emerges over a period of, say, 1850 to 1950, in response to the needs of industry. That system includes nods to business (my mother-in-law rest her soul learned shorthand, the 10-key add[ing machine], and touch typing, all skills that are gone away or that are going) and to academe. The premium attached to college education is more slight when there are union jobs or at least good-paying jobs for young adults who have specific skills. But as the job market matures (and as unions go away, at least in the US), everything changes: The extreme targeting of specific jobs and matching those with specific skills goes away.

The auto-manufacturing market (it’s a market for graduates from the point of view of educators) is a case in point. At present, specific skills are in demand, sufficiently so that where there are factories there are jobs

and there are high-school graduates to fill them.

(Don't miss the irony, btw: The auto industry gave education one of its most persistent frameworks, one in which teachers are the producers and students are the products; now as the industry's needs and those of society are changing, that model is woefully inadequate and has produced [see what I did there?] students who have become educators and decision-makers who are themselves limited.)

In the future, as demand for new cars dwindles, demand for specific skills will dwindle as well. The ability of TVET to shift to meet the need for specific skills will be undercut by increasing need for general skills and capacities—empathy, communication, problem-solving. But each of these skills in isolation won’t be enough. You need to employ all three, probably, to be successful.

Change drivers in the auto industry (and thereby in TVET) include: 1) The development of driverless cars; 2) the gig economy. These two emerging events are linked, of course, because gig-economy capitalists look fondly on the possibility of not investing in gig-economy labor. In any event, these factors are going to lead to the reduction in auto manufacturing. And auto manufacturing is a big-deal sector, worldwide; there were about 94,000,000 cars made in 2016, by more than 9 million people supported by another 41 million employed in “indirect” jobs related to the industry (per the International Organization of Vehicle Manufacturers, or OICA).

We don’t imagine that people are going to make fewer trips — on the contrary — but we can predict that they will buy fewer cars. If car ownership costs me US $4,000 per year in California (where we _know_ we will get driverless cars first), that’s probably approx 200 trips. In which I can use my phone and my laptop, focus on my conversation with my lovely wife, Sandra, swap texts with my niece, read the new york review of books, see the Democracy Now! podcast, and generally enrich my life or increase my productivity (which fortunately might include building knowledge of popular culture as embodied by, say, Game of Thrones or Dear White People) and by doing anything other than driving. And, I’m not competing with the guy with the Tesla or the guy with the Corvette, I’m in the car that arrives with me in it.

And this car is unowned by me and by any other individual. So why would I buy my own car?

Once “my” car arrives and offloads me it’s off to the next pick up, all night and all day long. One car doing the work of three or four cars belonging to three or four Uber drivers who (I hope) sleep sometime.

So the use of cars becomes more efficient.

So what does that mean for school systems in the US and elsewhere. The US is 2nd-largest manufacturer of cars in the world; China is the first, and has been since 2009. If I'm not buying a car, and neither are the three or four Uber drivers who have been made redundant by Uber's driverless metal beast, we're talking a serious reduction in demand for the automotive industry's product. (Over time, not right away. This all might start in California, but we are a ways from exporting driverless tech to, say, Burundi.)

I visited a vocational-education secondary school in Indonesia in 2010, a country that produced over 1 million cars in 2015. The school is really well run, but of course jobs-for-graduates are the sine qua non of both school performance and community satisfaction. As new hires at the local auto manufacturing plant started to dwindle, the principal reached out to ask, Huh? What? Why?

The auto guys responded that in fact they needed new hires with CAD (Computer Aided-Design) skills. So the principal lobbied the school-community committee or association or whatever to purchase a CAD system (US $200 for educator versions in 2010, between $1 and $4,000 for businesses). The community ponied up and the kids gained skills and were again employable.

TVET is huge. It’s the closest thing to demand-driven education that we have. And also the most consistently implemented program of learning by doing. We can assume that TVET will evolve to pace change in the auto industry, as best it can. But we should also assume that there will be a huge drop-off in demand for new cars and the workers who (would) build them.

]]>More on community networkinghttp://natomagroup.com/natoma-home/2017/6/2/more-on-community-networking.htmlEdmond Gaible2017-06-02T19:11:59Z2017-06-02T19:11:59ZIn light of the publication of the ISOC community-networking summit report, another question arises, something like: What are the processes that lead to internet access for under-served communities?

These could include pure private-sector extensions of mobile-broadband networks, Universal Service Obligations (USO) that support either private-sector or civil-society initiatives, the establishment of community networks that serve as transitions -- either by providing infrastructure for sale or by demonstrating demand -- that lead to the introduction of private-sector networks. OR by the establishment of community networks that never transition.

---

I would like to note that the ISOC report refers to two such networks, Mesh Bukavu and Connecting Eenhana, that provide communications and information within the network but that aren't connected to the internet. Others have very limited internet access but post / publish information that is assumed to be of local interest and value.

Wildly cool.

]]>Community networking - Internet Society posts report on summithttp://natomagroup.com/natoma-home/2017/6/2/community-networking-internet-society-posts-report-on-summit.htmlEdmond Gaible2017-06-02T18:43:57Z2017-06-02T18:43:57ZIn May 2017 the Internet Society (ISOC) published its analysis of a November 2016 summit on community networks -- communications networks in which infrastructure is deployed and operated by citizens to meet their own needs. The publication, Understanding Community Networks in Africa is light on context and light on data for my tastes, but it adequately represents the concerns of the network operators in terms of resources, regulatory support, technical support and other issues.

It would be great to have a more clear understanding of the processes that have given rise to these networks. The implication is that they are demand-driven, but some of the discussion of funding and origination also suggests that the networks are "pushed" into likely areas without concern for local capacity or demand.

While in some cases it was the more informed community members who started the community network, individuals who were external to the community informed other communities about the potential of establishing their own network. In the latter case, close collaboration with local institutions and structures (tribal authorities, schools, hospitals, etc.) was established from inception to make sure the initiative aligned with local communication needs and sensitivities

Hmm. I would love to know more about the information exchanges that are described here. There are some really great, proven and effective models for community-based decision-making. (The one that comes to mind is Jhai Foundation's modification of Saul Alinsky's approach, which Jhai used successfully to establish a community network in Phon Kam, Lao PDR, in about 2003.) Also, as there's no template for community-networking initiatives, perhaps this would be a good place to start. How to engage stakeholders in discussions of issues around communications....

Here btw is a photo I took of the installation of a Wifi repeater that was part of the Jhai network.

The Jhai network was started (with much hoohah around a bicycle-powered computer) primarily because the villagers identified communication as a pressing need -- interrelated with local markets, conversations with family members gone in the Lao diaspora, and so on. The original dialogs about problems and needs arrived at the solution of a community network entirely naively, the determination could have been that water harvesting or accounting skills or a coffee cooperative were sorely needed. In any event, the Jhai network struggled in the face of government decisions (which is to say, perhaps, interests, which is to say, perhaps, well, never mind...). Some years later, Jhai did establish a coffee collective, however that was much farther to the south in Lao.

It's possible that the community networks at the ISOC summit resulted from facilitated stakeholder dialogs similar to those used by Jhai. But the publication gives the impression that community networks have a specific virtue, that "the world" needs more of them even if stakeholder communities aren't so sure.

]]>PPPs and getting things done in ICT4D and Ehttp://natomagroup.com/natoma-home/2016/6/24/ppps-and-getting-things-done-in-ict4d-and-e.htmlEdmond Gaible2016-06-24T08:28:18Z2016-06-24T08:28:18Z

I made an error. Not the first I’ve made ever, and not the most egregious, but among the more opportunistic: A few years ago I developed, in collaboration with the smart, experienced and dialed-in Anthony Bloome of USAID, a a white paper or other kind of publication supporting the design of ICT4E projects *(https://www.usaid.gov/sites/default/files/documents/1865/E1-FP_ICT_Compendium.pdf). Ten principles that were intended to help USAID country officers and others engender (that would be design and manage the implementation of) technology projects in schools and education systems.

Hog wash. Or something.

I left out the most important principle. I wouldn’t junk any of the others, at least not usually, but just now I don't find them readable and I'm not going to share them here. The entire premise of that paper is that with appropriate support and in collaboration with private-sector and government partners, USAID education officers can achieve effective designs of technology projects.

learning aid for four cardinal directions, Kabul

We are talking about decisions that require expertise in several fields. One of these is the most dynamic, innovation-oriented fields in human history, and one that has had profound changes on social, economic and individual conditions—the personal computer began its evolution about 40 years ago (1977, date of the launch of Apple II and TRS 80), gaining momentum through the launch of the Maciintosh in 1984, Windows 3 in 1986, and so on. The World Wide Web got its start more recently, about 1992. Since then, we’ve seen the emergence of mobile devices, lower-cost solar, mobile broadband, mobile money, social enterprises. (Premise.com, a social enterprise in Silicon Valley, makes big-data analytics available to development organizations and others.)

At the same time, as I’ve mentioned elsewhere, development has “matured” as a field: bottom-up and participatory solutions (and rhetoric), focus on girls and women, micro-loans and micro-enterprise, education in emergencies, outcomes-based programs and assessments—elements that seem natural, obvious, have required a long time (˜60 years) to be normalized because we’re dealing with a field in which the starting assumption is that having the money and having the power meant having the intelligence to make a difference. Not true. Perhaps we have gotten wiser; perhaps we are casting about for new methods; perhaps economic growth has had impact that outstrips that of development.

In any case, how can we expect a list of principles to enable someone to navigate in this dynamic environment? How can we expect a development person to understand the importance of the shit-canning of SCORM and its replacement by Tin Can? We can’t. We shouldn’t.

The most important element in the design of successful ICT4D and ICT4E projects is the team. That team needs the right combination of expertise and the opportunity to bring that expertise to bear on a significant problem in a significant way.

(Why do I think this? I’m just finishing my report to USAID on digital library design to support the provision of mother-tongue books to young readers. Cool. I’ve learned a lot. I’ve had to learn a lot. If I were in another position—staff guy, private-sector guy, government guy—that learning would have been impossible. I and USAID and, more importantly, kids asked to learn to read, would be out of luck. More on this by Monday…)